Walter Kempowski - All for Nothing

She had no words at her command, and magic spells wouldn’t have been right. And she had never made the sign of the cross.

Should she take the boy to her own room with her? The way she used to in thunderstorms. And barricade everything in? She saw herself standing at the window with the three-barrelled shotgun, the boy beside her with a gun of his own, and they would defend themselves to the last.

She looked hard at herself, and the boy looked at her.

He didn’t say, ‘Is anything wrong?’ or, ‘What’s up?’ He looked at his mother in silence. How long would this last?

Finally she said, ‘Goodnight,’ and the word leapt out of her throat like a toad.

Katharina was afraid, but she was also a little proud of herself for saying yes to this adventure, and now she had to go through with it. No one had ever trusted her to do anything before, and no one would have thought what was going to happen now possible. Not she herself. Never in her life. She felt proud, but there was fear as well as her pride.

‘Cold, naked fear,’ she said out loud.

And it also occurred to her that what was about to happen was a lie. Was she really anxious to save a human being, or did she just want to prove that she thought herself capable of something? The wish to do something crazy, like that outing of hers with Lothar Sarkander. Would she have to tell Eberhard about that when all this was over?

And when would it all be over?

*

Everything was recorded in the photo album. Lake Garda — its waters had been smooth and green, with white boats on them. The street singers and the little café. Eberhard had written numbers down on his napkin and worked out, for her benefit, how wonderfully well money grew of its own accord in their account: the English shares, the percentages from Romania coming in. What a good thing they had given up farming … And they had discussed what to do with the money that increased as if of itself. Maybe they might even go to America on the SS Bremen some day?

Thank goodness they didn’t have the estate hanging round their necks any more! Forty thousand acres — horses, tractors, maids, and the reapers from Poland every year.

Lake Garda. They had crossed to the other side in a boat, to the side that lay in shadow. And there was nothing at all going on there. But they’d had a lovely view of the sunny opposite side.

The words under the photograph were ‘Eberhard as captain!’ He was standing in the boat, shielding his eyes with his hand.

Then Eberhard had to put on uniform, and when gunfire was exchanged it meant the end of the English money, and the Romanians stopped paying. Instead his officer’s salary came in, month after month.

He had sent wine and chocolate from France, and cigarettes from Greece. And brown sugar and sunflower oil from Russia.

The telephone on the desk; there was no one she could have talked to at the moment. ‘Are you crazy?’ Felicitas would have said. She couldn’t expect understanding from that quarter. Or could she? Felicitas might even have laughed. ‘Don’t be daft!’

Perhaps she could have talked to Vladimir the Pole about it. But he was against communists and against Jews, and he certainly hadn’t the faintest idea about the plot of 20 July. And then she’d have made herself vulnerable, dependent on his grace and favour. Then he’d have her in the hollow of his hand. He’d sit at the fireside and make the puppets dance.

What about Auntie? Could she go over to see her and say, ‘Listen, there’s something I have to tell you.’

Auntie had a picture of Hitler hanging in her room.

The idea of Drygalski occurred to her — why wasn’t there anyone for her to confide in?

She wasn’t afraid of Drygalski. She almost felt as if she’d be tricking him.

‘We’ll deal with this,’ he might have said, protecting her from everything.

At this moment Drygalski was sitting at his sick wife’s bedside, holding her hand. His wife, grey-faced, was staring at the ceiling.

He thought of their happy wedding, always so happy as they looked forward to it — they had imagined a boat trip to the valley in a folding boat, but nothing had come of that idea. Then they soon had their boy, and then Drygalski was always standing behind the counter, selling an eighth of a kilo of smoked sausage, hoping to get somewhere in life. He’d bought the new sausage-slicing machine — ‘Will there be anything else?’ — and then came the bankruptcy.

It hadn’t been a profiteer who brought him down, but the taxman. He hadn’t been up to dealing with the tax office.

They hadn’t been angry there, they just kept looking at him and wondering whether he would manage to find something else.

And now came the refugees from the east, from Latvia and Estonia, singly or in groups, on foot, by rail or in horse-drawn carts. So far he had been able to find accommodation for them all. It had been possible to put them up in the Settlement; he had billeted them now here, now there. Everyone had to take in refugees. He had drawn up a plan so that he could supervise them. Refugees: there were some dubious characters among them who might appropriate stuff that wasn’t theirs. Many of them never washed, or were always complaining. But there was also a fine old national tradition in those parts, people you could imagine in an engraving, upright and not to be intimidated. German blood that must be saved. The homeland spread its arms to take them in.

Some refugees would have to go to the Georgenhof too. It would be impossible to avoid that. It would be done tactfully. Perhaps suitable people would come along. Recently that retired judge and his wife had been here; they’d have suited the Globigs, but the judge hadn’t hung around here for long, he had gone on again. Had taken a good breath of the local air and left. No one stayed here long. A few days, and then they were off again.

Drygalski held his wife’s hand. Perhaps, he thought, I should read her something from the newspaper to distract her mind. But how was he to explain that the news now was of ‘disengagement’? How was anyone to understand that?

It’s a good thing, he also thought, that our son has already fallen, in Poland, or we would fear for him every day now.

He let go of his wife’s hand. He must telephone Mitkau, find out if there were more coming from the east again tomorrow, and then go through the lists and think where to put them. Most stayed only a couple of days. There was constant coming and going.

On the stairs he hesitated for a moment. He went up to sit in his son’s room, and looked out of the window. In the shadows cast by moonlight, he saw the long black lines of topsoil where the wind had swept the snow away.

In the Georgenhof, Katharina went to the door and put her ear to the keyhole. The dog barked; he heard the maids chattering as they came back from the pleasures of socializing. Should she bring them up here? Or go and sit with them? No, that wouldn’t do. What would they want up here?

They down there, we up here — there was no sense of community.

She went into the conservatory, put out the light, drew the curtain aside and looked down at the darkness of the grounds; dark but illuminated by the snow. The semi-circular path trodden in the snow on the grass showed clearly.

She put a shawl round her shoulders. The cacti were wizened, the soil in which the plants grew was dry.

Big stars, tiny stars, sparkling and shining. The moon rose higher and higher. The branches of the oak trees rose in front of its primeval disc. The lines of a hand, lines of fate and lifelines.

The sound of a solitary aircraft moving over the night sky. The pilot would see the farms lying in the snow, the Georgenhof in the snow, the neat and tidy Settlement where every house was just like its neighbour, and Mitkau with its crooked streets.